The Zap Gun

by Philip K. Dick

Book Overview

In this biting satire, the Cold War may have ended, but the eastern and western governments never told their citizens. Instead they created an elaborate ruse, wherein each side comes up with... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0586041125
• Release Date: January 1975
• Publisher: Panther
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Lighter on the brain than most PKD books

I am generally a PKD fan. Most of his books have so many sub texts and paranoia that it takes a little neurosis to understand. This is one his few books where this is a little less intense. The plot and character interactions are straight forward. Themes are reitierated in a concise language. And the book has an unusual optimistic feel in the ending. Which, it being a PKD book, freaked me out.

Very funny, often prescient, look at a different sort of "arms race"

One of the happy results of Philip K. Dick's posthumous, Hollywood-fed, popularity is that his work is very widely available. The Zap Gun is surely one of his less well-known novels, but here we see it in a brand new large-sized paperback edition. It's not one of his masterworks, but it is a fine, enjoyable, very funny, novel. Dick's novels very often have a comic aspect, but this is one of the funniest. Curiously enough, it is set at almost the present time -- our present, that is: 2005. The US and allies (Wes-Bloc) and the Soviet Union and allies (Peep-East) have secretly come to an agreement: instead of continuing the ruinous arms race, they will pretend to be constantly developing new weapons, which are then "plowshared": turned into goofy consumer products. The weapon designers are psychics, who dream up their new designs in trance states. The Wes-Bloc designer, Lars Powderdry, or Mr. Lars of Mr. Lars Incorporated (the conceit being that weapons are basically fashion), is the main viewpoint character. He is tortured by the knowledge that he is essentially a fraud -- his designs are useless. He is also obsessed with his opposite number in Peep-East: Lilo Topchev, of whom he knows nothing. This despite his very sexy mistress, Maren Faine, head of the Paris branch of Mr. Lars, Incorporated. Dick mines this central idea for some comic play, then introduces a slightish plot. Aliens from Sirius invade Earth, looking for slaves. Earth has a problem -- for decades nobody has developed new weapons. In desperation, the two blocs decide to have Lars and Lilo collaborate -- which satisfies Lars's desire to meet Lilo. But Lilo, instead of cooperating, immediately tries to kill Lars. And even when they work together, their designs, though unusual, seem hardly useful. There is a fairly pointless, though also funny, subplot about a paranoid conspiracy theorist and White Supremacist who is elected as an "average man" to the governing body of Wes-Bloc. The eventual solution involves a wild mix of time travel, androids, drugs, toys, and comic books. All of this hardly matters -- Dick was under less control of his plot than usual here -- I think his main concern was to be funny. Lars is a fairly sympathetic main character. Dick's extrapolations of the future often seem quite prescient -- indeed, the book has hardly dated at all. And he succeeds in being funny, and very entertaining. The Zap Gun isn't a great work, but it is well worth reading.

When Marketing Runs the Military

I liked the concept of mass marketing taking over everything, even the military and the problem of what would happen if real weapons were needed but the story didn't move at the compelling pace that Ubik did.

Science-fiction satire with outrageous premise

Written in 1964 more or less concurrently with The Penultimate Truth, this is one of several of Dick's good second-rank novels of the 1960s that tends to be overlooked. The book actually has practically nothing to do with its title, which was bestowed upon it because the publisher just wanted to publish a novel called The Zap Gun. But this is no science fiction spoof. It's highly humorous, but it's a serious satire on the arms race and techniques of political manipulation. Dick challenges the very notion of consensual reality, which is a product of mass consciousness, a lowest common denominator of belief that the media, moneyed interests, and the government conspire to perpetuate. Lars Powderdry is a "weapons fashion designer" who goes into drug-induced mediumistic trances to meet the consumer demand for new weapons concepts. None of his weapons actually works, but they don't need to in this society of "pursaps" (pure saps) who are unaware that all the new wonder weapons are nonfunctional and work only in filmed simulations. This is a terrifically clever work of trenchant irony.

misunderstood....excellent parody and also story of longing

Of all PKD's books this may be the most misunderstood. Misunderstood because it is only a book about world politics on the surface. It represents one of his more imaginative books on his own creativity (plowshares, toys, inventions) and also a story of great longong both personally in love and professionally in his abilities. There is the usual self-doubt, the unexpected twists and, unlike many of his books, the ending his his optimistic and personally most fulfilled.I have read near all of his novels, and the extended version of this book (not the short 1965 edition) is one of the best novels he ever wrote.